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Philosophy Links
This page is devoted to links to various philosophical writings.
All of these materials authored by Robert G. Brown are published under
a modified Open Publication License that permits unlimited free
noncommercial and personal use. The materials (books, presentations, or
otherwise) may not be published in any form or media that is sold for
profit. The details of the license can be viewed here and in each available version viewed
below. Stats for this page can be viewed here.
Commercial publishers interested in producing an actual book (or
other media form) of the material below are encouraged to contact the author.
- Metastructure
A bit of a Zen ramble on religion, philosophy, physics, and Zen. Take
it with a grain of salt -- it is deliberately lighthearted, isn't
finished yet (and who knows when I'll next have the time to work on it)
but I pretty much mean it. (05/09/03, rgb)
- Axioms
Axioms
Version 0.6.0 Draft!
Robert G. Brown (rgb)
Warning Warning Warning! This is totally a draft release
and is liable to change without warning, to contain twinned chapters, to
contain material that will not be in the final version, and to be
incomplete and inconsistent or worse! It is being released as a
draft as an open invitation for further comments and suggestions from
the many people that found even the very short pre-draft form. It's
probably going to get worse before it gets better again, alas...
This is the official pre-publication distribution website for the
Axioms project. This work is basically about what we know:
the foundations of all human knowledge. It is revealed that we don't
know much of anything -- that the basis for most of what
we know are a set of assumptions that are rarely enumerated or examined
(at least outside of mathematics and science) because even to examine
them requires additional assumptions. These assumptions are the
axioms upon which the whole shaky edifice of human knowledge is
built.
Here is a very short outline of how they book may eventually
be organized:
- Reason and Its Limitations
- A look at the so-called "laws of thought", at set theory, at
Jaynes' notion of conditional belief or probable belief, and at the
closely allied ideas of logic (including what might be called "zen
logic"), mathematics, and computer science. Godel's theorem is examined
in some detail. Finally, it is shown that when it comes right down to
it, we cannot prove a whole lot about the world we see using
these tools one at a time or all together.
- Philosophy
- Here it is shown (basically restating the conclusions of the first
part in context) that Philosophy is Bullshit. This is a
deliberately provocative way of phrasing it, a way that that no longer
admits any possibility that there is an answer out there to be found by
means of pure reason, let alone that some particular answer is
the One True Answer. It asserts that as a necessary prior
condition for any sort of philosophical discussion all participants
need to agree on their axioms, the unprovable assumptions and
methods of reasoning upon which their conclusions are ultimately based.
It then examines at least some of the near-infinity of often mutually
contradictory and self-referential axioms that underlie major subsystems
of human society. Only the axioms of mathematics and science are seen
to be reasonably consistent and clearly stated (if still largely unknown
even to many scientists), and even there the axioms are "bullshit" in
the sense that they are logically unprovable assumptions.
- Axioms
- In this section a first pass is made at proposing (or if
you prefer and more honestly, cobbling together from the previous
efforts of many philosophical giants) a set of axioms upon which
human society might be based. It differs significantly from
previous axiom sets (at least those from outside of science) in that it
is openly acknowledged from the beginning that it is neither complete
nor correct, merely provisional and practical. It is intended to
be discussed, argued over, tried and rejected, modified and tried again,
with the stated goal being (paradoxically enough) a rational
society based on irrational assumptions that -- work. In
this society there is room for God, for Self, for realization and
enlightenment. Humans can talk about what they know in the full
understanding of what it means to say that they "know" anything at all.
The one thing that is no longer possible in such a society is to
claim that one is in possession of absolute truth, as it is absolutely
true that no such thing can be proven to exist.
Fairly ambitious, to be sure. This work strips off the
undergarments of the philosophical basis for knowing anything and
lays it out naked for us all to see that -- there is nobody and nothing
there. Far from the Emperor being there and the clothing being
imaginary, we find the Emperor entirely missing and that all the Reality
that we've every seen or imagined is nothing but traditional and
colorful undergarments! Fortunately, the clothes do make the man,
metaphorically speaking...
If you accept its conclusions, this will be the last work of
philosophy you'll ever need to read. When you're done, you may or may
not know the deepest answers to the deepest pseudoquestions, but you'll
at least be able to tell a real question (one with a real -- derivable
-- answer) from a pseudoquestion (one with no derivable answer, only a
meta answer -- an axiom -- for an answer). You'll understand that all
real answers are connected by inevitable chains of logic and
reason to axioms, and hence are always subject to doubt.
At the end of it all, you should end up well-equipped to choose
your axioms as the most important human freedom, the one that
underlies all the rest. A wise choice can lead to the greatest human
society that one can imagine. Foolish, conflicted choices can lead to
the extinction of the human race. Can't do any better than that.
Really.
Hmmm, maybe philosophy is bullshit, but just maybe it is
important bullshit as well...
- God the King, the Father, the Brother, the Ghost
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God the King, the Father, the Brother, the Ghost is a
currently (very) short article on the distortion of the image of God
caused by the frequent use of human metaphors in scriptural writings.
It is concluded that God is not a King or mundane ruler in any
sense of the word, is not a Father (or Mother or any other
human/sexual parent), is not even a Brother in the sense that
certain humans are God to the exclusion of others. God is the Holy
Spirit, the very essence of awareness and existence itself.
Consequently God is both very simple and yet very difficult indeed to
get a conceptual grip on.
- A Few Modest Proposals for an Improved World
The following small list of ideas in presented in the hope that someday,
somehow, enough people will read them that they will "emerge" in the sea
of public consciousness and transform themselves into realities. Each
idea is presented together with a brief discussion in which the
reasoning underlying the idea is laid out. Feel free to forward these
proposals or a URI to this page to your favorite politicians.
Note well, this is a rather disjoint collection. The ideas are not
necessarily related. Each idea is accompanied by a short block of text
explaining why the idea is (in my opinion) worth trying and might
improve life if it were.
Politicians, in particular, should feel free to steal these ideas
and present them as their own brilliant concepts, if that is the
only way they are willing to make use of them. Play right on through,
Please!
As you'll see, not all of these ideas originate strictly within me
anyway (although quite a few do and likely will in the future) and by
the time even the most modest of them is implemented even discussion and
development of the ideas will have occurred that even the ones that are
mine alone will be mine alone no longer.
If I ever record enough ideas to make it worthwhile I may organize the
ideas into broad categories, but in the meantime the list is presented
in no particular order. Enjoy.
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